


you'll drink from my bones

by orphan_account



Category: Grand Theft Auto V
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-31
Updated: 2015-08-31
Packaged: 2018-04-18 05:09:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4693235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>michael turns forty-eight and remembers birthdays past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you'll drink from my bones

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by keaton henson's "[birthdays](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvJtrbj589c)" which i would highly recommend to anyone with a masochistic streak.

Forty-eight. Forty-eight, and the clock ticking, ticking, ticking.

Michael de Santa can feel himself dying. 

He takes a deep drink and turns the volume up on his television, blasting The Shoulder of Orion because God damn it, it’s his birthday and he’s alone and old and he deserves it. The watch his wife left on the kitchen island before he woke up this morning is still lying there, the note read and discarded. His daughter is gone with people he probably doesn’t know and certainly doesn’t want her with, and his son has fled to some friend’s house to play video games and get high or whatever loser twenty-somethings do nowadays.

You know, when he was Jimmy’s age, he was in prison. God damn, he really did the best he could for his kids, he swears up and down. But something went wrong. Everything went wrong, really. 

Michael flexes his hand. He itches all over, suddenly, weirdly discomforted in his own skin. When did he get this old?

Tracey he can forgive more easily, though he would never admit it. She was his princess, his sweet little girl, but always too wild and too free for him to expect much of. Jimmy, though, Jimmy was supposed to be his protege. He was supposed to be a big football star, or a bookish lawyer, or hell, follow him into the business, but doing it the right way, learning from his father’s mistakes. 

But instead he has a daughter who, instead of being an artist who perhaps rebels is still ultimately loyal and loving and a son who is strong but sensitive in ways his father could not be, he has two spoiled, fucked up brats. And sure, he couldn’t let the blame rest on their shoulders, but for fuck’s sake, when he was Tracey’s age he was pulling his first heist. 

Damn. His first heist. It aches to remember but he’s in a destructive mood, so he lets his thoughts wander. Twenty-three and he was getting serious. A tiny bank in the middle of nowhere and a job he only got on because he lied about his experience, and his first kill (a cop who cornered him but was woefully unprepared for him to shoot), the first buzzing high that put cicadas in his head that would live there forevermore, singing and screaming and only abated by the rush of adrenaline nothing could replace. 

And of course he remembers twenty-four, drinking with Trevor who he is stupid enough then to want--

Anyways, Trevor had just gotten out of prison and they needed to celebrate, and it was Michael’s birthday anyways and they didn’t kiss yet but they almost did and that’s worth remembering as much as anything. They go back to their motel and even though it’s midway through June it’s cool in their dark, damp room and Michael’s head is swimming from cheap perfume and cheaper booze and Trevor stumbles or maybe leans in and Michael catches him and they giggle and look at each other and nothing happens, nothing happens. 

 

And then he’s twenty-five and Lester is making a toast to loose women and good moonshine and more money than trash like them knows what to do with, and Michael is grinning and Trevor is grinning and so are the girls in their laps and everything glows. Maybe it’s the cheap fluorescents in their den of iniquity, though. The linoleum is peeling under their feet and the door hangs all wrong in the frame, but there’s five thousand dollars in cash on their table and that’s nothing, nothing, not compared to what it will be, what it has been.

Trevor does the first line and everyone follows, and the glow turns into a sparkle and Michael fucks two girls in a row and then Trevor blows him under his sheets as the sun rises and the whole world pulses and pounds and he’s never felt more complete. They’re going to rule the world. Soon, soon, soon.

 

At twenty-six there’s a storm outside and the thunder is so loud and so close it shakes the glass in the window panes and it’s just the four of them; Lester and Brad and Trevor and him, drinking and passing around a joint. Their TV is cheap and barely works but it’s playing a game that Michael isn’t paying attention to even though it’s only on for his sake anyways. Trevor’s hard, boney knee knocks against his. Michael knocks back. 

They keep going and going until they’re all wasted and it’s late and the storm is only getting worse and Brad passes out in the loveseat and Lester gives Michael a firm clap on the shoulder before retreating to his bedroom and Trevor says something Michael can’t hear but he’s smiling and Michael is smiling too. 

They go to Trevor’s bedroom because it’s closer, and it’s so simple. He presses Trevor on his stomach into the mattress and Trevor moans deep and rumbling, or maybe that’s the thunder, and Michael is laughing and kissing the back of his neck and they’re grinding together and Trevor is panting and Michael is knocking things off the side table in the dark to reach what he needs, to get his fingers slick enough to slip inside and he doesn’t know how long he does it, just knows that Trevor is whimpering and begging, please, Michael, please, and they’re both still half-dressed but it’s okay, it’s okay.

They haven’t done this before, not yet, it always felt like too much, too far, and Michael stopped it but now Trevor is around him and under him and in the air and his mouth and oh, God, this is what heaven is like, isn’t it? This is what he sold his soul to the devil for; for the hot, tight pulse of Trevor’s body drawing him inside, for the scratch of his chest hair dragging over Trevor’s old, worn shirt (when did he lose his shirt?), for the pounding of the worst storm Ohio has seen in a generation harkening in their union, and oh, oh God, he’s clenching his teeth because if he doesn’t, the truth will escape, will be out and can never be taken back.

He’s going to come and Trevor is gasping and chanting his name and Michael buries his face in Trevor’s hairline and doesn’t say his name, doesn’t say anything, anything, because if he does he’ll tell him he loves--

 

And then he’s twenty-seven and he has a headache and he’s tired, but Trevor wants to go out. They’ve been working all day and nearly got busted by the cops when the new kid who never becomes anyone important gets reckless with his beer and gets them pulled over and Michael has been damn near ready to pop him one ever since.   
But Trevor insists and Michael has a hard time not giving in to the idea of a strip club, so they go and it’s as shitty and terrible as Michael expects, but there’s a girl. Her name is Krystal and her hair is thick and dark and shiny and her eyes are warm and when she comes close after Trevor slips her a hundred she smells like peaches. She smiles at him and guides him away and the boys whistle and Michael smiles at Trevor over his shoulder because he understands power exchanges just as well as he does and he knows this girl is a tribute, a gift, and he loves it. 

And she gives him one dance, and then two, and then three and then he’s paying her for dances she isn’t giving, she’s just sitting and talking to him while songs play in the background, her hand on his knee while they talk about everything they can think of and it turns out she’s a damn good conversationalist and Michael forgets all about being almost thirty, about the upcoming ending of his youth, of a new part of his life that he isn’t sure he’s ready for. 

 

He’s twenty-eight and Tracey is due in two and a half weeks and he and Amanda have been married a month and he’s so in love with her he thinks he could die from it. She makes him a little cake and writes his name and draws a heart on it and it’s the best thing he’s ever eaten. His wedding ring twinkles and her eyes are bright and he lies her down on their little bed afterwards and makes love to her with the only window in their trailer open so the summer air can come in. 

He doesn’t know it yet, but soon love will be redefined once again and he will meet the girl who will rend his heart in two, his daughter who will make the world stop spinning and at long last, everything will make sense. 

In the meantime, though, his wife falls asleep and he calls L and tells him he’ll be there next month, he swears, as soon as she’s born. He hasn’t forgotten who he is. Trevor will not speak to him and Michael doesn’t dwell on it because Trevor is prone to great and violent gestures. This is not a new phenomenon. He will come around, Brad reminds him. He just needs to see Michael is still serious about what they do. And he is. 

 

Twenty-nine is hard. Amanda is pregnant again, but only five months in and their daughter’s birthday is coming up, but when Michael tells the crew he’s going back home, it doesn’t go over well.

Trevor turns purple and Michael braces himself for a fight, but instead, he just walks out of the hotel, slamming the door behind him. Lester sighs and wipes his glasses and shrugs, reminding Michael that their drug smuggling ring is still fledgling and this new plan to run women isn’t even off the ground yet, but if he needs to see his family, then fine. Brad shrugs, because Brad has always been of the opinion that Michael can do what he wants. 

So it’s settled. He’ll get a ticket when he gets there, because right now he just needs to be away from this place, away from the cheap floors and the ugly sheets. He needs his family. He’s twenty-nine and his daughter will be one next week and he’ll have a son soon, a boy who will need a father like he needed a father and the thought of being here for one more second makes his stomach turn. 

Michael is throwing the last of his shit in a bag and getting ready to drive to the airport when there’s Trevor, in the doorway, reeking of booze and the burning plastic smell of meth and he’s stalking towards him and dropping to his knees without preamble and Michael should stop him but he doesn’t, he doesn’t, he just wraps his fingers in Trevor’s oily, dirty hair and fucks into his mouth and Trevor swallows and Michael wants to slap him hard, to break his nose, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t. 

 

He turns thirty in the middle of a screaming match with Trevor in western Texas, where they’re supposed to be scoping out a casino. Brad inhales and Trevor and Michael both whip around to snarl at him in tandem. This is not the time for his idiotic sidebars. Moses is there, too, but he’s always been more laid back than the rest of the guys they run with and he knows to keep to himself. Trevor is pacing in the way that lets Michael know he’s winding down, chewing on Michael’s rational, patient argument and that soon he will give in. The clock ticks over to 12:02. 

Eventually Trevor stops pacing and the others go to their own rooms and they collide, biting and scratching and screaming and Trevor pulls his hair and Michael grabs his jaw and digs his nails in hard enough to draw blood at the corner of Trevor’s mouth. He leans in to lick it away and Trevor bites him, and oh, God, he’s so fucking hard and he wants to rip Trevor to shreds, to chew him up and puke him out and fuck him on the floor all over again. 

Trevor’s hands are shaking and his teeth are snapping together and he’s chasing his own pleasure against Michael’s lap. Michael reaches between them, fumbling with his own zipper and then Trevor’s, gathering their cocks in the dry, tight circle of his fist and jerking so fast it burns, it hurts, and he needs more, more, more.   
Trevor bites him again and then they’re both coming and Trevor snarls that he _hates_ him. Michael isn’t sure if it’s true. 

 

It takes until thirty-one for him to realize he is no longer a boy. When he was younger, he was afraid that he would be like his father, ever chasing his youth and running from his responsibilities, turning to childish games to keep himself feeling like a wild twenty-something for all his life. 

But Michael is not tempted. He is thirty-one, and he has a family. A wife. Two beautiful children. A house, soon, and a dog. He loves them, and they love him, and Michael is okay with that. He is okay with being a man. 

He’s on a job with Brad, making connections with some drug dealers they might want to bring into their operation, and for the first time in a long time, Michael is spending his birthday alone. He calls his family before they go to bed, listens to his daughter and his wife sing happy birthday while Jimmy giggles in the background, and he knows when he smiles that they are smiling too.

He sits up on his twin sized mattress in his filthy hotel room and watches From Russia with Love and drinks a scotch on the rocks and doesn’t think too hard about clenched teeth or sharp nails, or about wet pussy and gentle kisses because this is his time, he has a right to some solitude without pain and without ghosts. 

He doesn’t sleep for a long time.

 

Thirty-two and thirty-three pass without fanfare. He is able to slip away to North Yankton for a day or two before or after and get a quick kiss from his children and gift from his wife and then it’s back to work. His crew is blossoming into a full-time crime organization before his eyes, and he feels like he’s on top of the world. The money is pouring in and he’s saving a majority of it, hoping to one day retire to the big, beautiful mansion he and Amanda used to fantasize about when they were kids who were just having fun for a summer. 

They have to stay in the trailer for now, but he makes sure that they all have lavish gifts for holidays and birthdays, and when Jimmy and Tracey present him with handmade cards covered in hearts and crooked writing, he has to clench his fist to keep from crying in front of them. He is more grateful for them than he has ever been for anything in his life. 

He gathers them both up into his arms and kisses their fat cheeks, blowing a raspberry on Tracey’s just to hear the musical sound of her giggling and to feel her little hands bunch up in his shirt. 

He needs to be closer.

 

So by the time he turns thirty-four, they’ve moved most of their operation to Tryon, a tiny town about a half-hour outside of Ludendorff, and he has Lester and Trevor and Brad sitting in his modest living room, plotting the logistics of their new brach of MDMA dealers in South Yankton. Tracey is in Trevor’s lap, sitting quietly so that she’s allowed to stay there, toying with Trevor’s hair while Jimmy “helps” Amanda cook dinner in the kitchen. 

Michael listens to Lester drone on and on about why this town is better than this one, and how much money they’ll need, and where to sell their “candy” to make the most off of it, but he can’t help but watch Trevor smile at Tracey, who grins back and snuggles into his chest. Something sharp twists in his gut, but he isn’t sure what it is. He looks away.

 

He is thirty-five, and two days ago his home was broken into by rival drug lords. His hands shake when he thinks about what would have happened if he hadn’t been there, what they would have done to Amanda, to Tracey, to Jimmy, for god’s sake. He has never felt more weak in all his life. 

Amanda is staying strong and Michael loves her so much it feels like he’s dying. She sets her jaw and clenches her fists and does not tremble when Michael admits that he isn’t sure he can protect them here. She nods and packs their things. 

The children, though. Things get harder. Jimmy has nightmares and starts wetting the bed again. Tracey doesn’t talk for a week and then suddenly can’t _stop_ talking, doing anything for attention from dancing and singing to breaking things and screaming. Years later, he will understand that his son needs to feel hidden and his daughter to feel seen for either of them to be safe. 

They have few options. Michael gets them new documents with fake last names and moves them to South Yankton. Lester approves. Trevor paces.

 

At thirty-six he’s away from his family, sitting by a motel pool with Moses and Trevor, drinking and splashing each other in the Arizona heat. It’s childish but it’s fun, and the sun is setting and they have enough alcohol to waste the night and they’ll have girls with a snap of their fingers and everything is on track again. They’re making money like it’s going out of style and when night finally falls they do a few lines and Trevor takes his hand and brings him back to his room and Michael chuckles when Trevor slurs that he loves him, he loves him so much.

 

Thirty-seven is just as uneventful. It will be a few months yet before he knows the weight of an FIB business card in his pocket, months more still until he uses it, and so for now, he is free to do as he wishes. He forgets to call home until the kids are already in bed, and Amanda chastises him without any real fire and tells him she misses him and wants him to come home soon, if only for a few days.

They go to a strip club and Michael fucks a girl in the champagne room and takes her back to the motel and fucks her again and Brad makes a joke about the last time he did that, he married her and Michael laughs and Trevor snaps that he’s going to bed, fuck all of you, and Brad and Michael shrug and laugh some more because who can ever understand Trevor? 

 

He spends his thirty-eighth birthday with Dave at his table after his children are in bed, talking specifics about what he needs to do to get out of here, to get his money and his family and leave the game behind him. Dave is explaining calmly the idea that his boss has, which is simple enough. A small job that becomes a deathtrap. They don’t have everything nailed down yet, obviously this will take time and Michael will have to lead on it; he’s expected to pick out a place and feed it to the FIB in order to keep his crew from figuring out what’s going on. He has yet to bring up exactly what will happen to the rest of them, and neither has Dave, and for now, Michael isn’t all that worried about it. He’ll cross that bridge when he gets to it. He has his children to think of. 

He’s been saving money for a while, now, and he’s got enough--somewhere around fifteen million--but Dave is asking for a monthly stipend if he wants to keep it out of the hands of the government (and, more importantly, untaxed). Michael doesn’t have much of a choice. He’s willing to do what it takes to get out of here, to get away from trailers and white trash and running, always running. He’s tired. 

 

He’s thirty-nine and the day is creeping closer and closer and he knows that the price for his freedom is Trevor’s life. Dave makes a good point, of course, that’s it’s more humane to put down a rabid animal than to let it die slowly and painfully, and Michael agrees. He’s doing the right thing. The good thing. The noble thing. He’s rescuing his family. After this, they’ll be safe. 

 

Forty is his first birthday after. He sits in the living room with Amanda curled against his side and his children lying on their stomachs on the floor watching a movie, and Michael is certain this is what heaven is, this is what he sold his soul to the devil for. It has to be. 

Something about it seems nostalgic and familiar, though they rarely do it. Michael realizes with an uncomfortable start that he is remembering a similar configuration from his youth, a ghost of time spent indoors while it storms when he was in his twenties, watching bad talk shows in between jobs with his crew. He shudders. Now he is safe. Now they are all safe. He pulls Amanda to his side a little tighter. 

 

Forty-one is much the same, and in that brief couple of yeas, Michael feels true peace. Everything in Vinewood is beautiful--hell, everything in Los Santos as a whole. The wind blows and Michael knows he is where he is meant to be, he is where everything will finally be okay. 

 

It’s not until forty-two that his children begin to drift. He notices it before that, of course, but it’s when neither of them are present as they were the years before when his birthday dinner rolls around that he realizes he may truly be losing touch with them. They’re both teenagers by now, rebellious as teens will be, but Tracey has been getting in more and more trouble and Jimmy has been drawing further and further into himself and Michael is. Worried. To say the least.

Amanda soothes him and reminds him that their children need time to be their own people, that the two of them can spend this time together like they used to back in the old days. They sit together but the conversation is stilted and they are more distant friends than husband and wife. They drink, at first a little, and then too much and they have drunk, sloppy sex on the couch and when Michael wakes up in the morning, everything hurts.

 

At forty-three it’s reversed--his wife is off in Morocco at some dance retreat, but Tracey tries to make him breakfast and Jimmy smiles more than usual, so it’s alright. Michael’s been trying to make new friends, but nothing lasts, and it shouldn’t shock him, God knows, but somehow it seems strange that all these men who were born into money are so different from him, understand so little of the world. It eats at him. 

He goes to the strip club when his children are asleep because he is still just a man. It smells like peaches and alcohol and he is happy to forget and forget and forget. 

 

Forty-four is fun. He doesn’t expect it, but he and Amanda have been in therapy and it has given them a few months of happiness, even if their children creep ever-closer to true delinquency. They go out and get a few drinks and have a nice dinner and hold hands like they used to, and Michael remembers why he fell in love with her in the first place. She’s pretty and quick witted and charming and he would give the world up all over again for her if she asked him to. 

She gives him cufflinks and one hell of a blowjob and there is something familiar about it that makes him want to shiver, to curl up and listen to rain (but it doesn’t rain here, not ever). Instead he strokes her hair gently and tells her he loves her. 

 

At forty-five, he is alone for the first time in Los Santos. Yesterday he and Amanda had a screaming fight that ended in broken glass all over the kitchen and Mandy packing up the kids and heading off to a hotel. Michael is still seething, still keeping his rage at a low simmer in his belly as he drinks and paces and snarls at nothing and no one in particular. 

He breaks some more glass and what does it matter, they can just buy more, who cares, who cares? 

 

He is forty-six and they’re trying, sort of, and the kids can sense the tension but he and Amanda were raised in cooly strained households and know how to walk the line with grace. They don’t yell, but the room could be a freezer with the chill between them, and Tracey chatters like she always does when she’s nervous and Jimmy stares at the wall and barely touches his food and Michael knows everything has gone wrong but doesn’t know the first thing about how to fix it.

 

And then all at once (and slowly, so slowly) he’s forty-seven. His mother died when she was forty-seven, when Michael was thirty and in southern Arizona casing banks to be robbed. He didn’t go to the funeral. Instead, he remembers the call from his aunt and gets older and fatter and grows ever more stagnant. He is dirty and immovable. His children buzz like mosquitoes on the fringes, his wife is god-knows-where, and he wants quiet. He wants peace.

He goes to a movie by himself and is vastly disappointed by modern Hollywood. He drives home and the town sparkles in the moonlight and he wants to glow with it, to twinkle like neon in his shining car, to glitter like pool water where he lies, but he can’t quite feel the magic anymore. 

When he gets home he notices Tracey has been spitting her gum on the goddamn driveway again. He remembers, absurdly, the gravel road that led to the trailer they lived in when Tracey was four and Jimmy was barely walking, thinks of how that man would not have thought twice about gum on his driveway.   
But he buried that man for a reason.

 

And at last he is forty-eight and feels fifty creeping closer with every passing moment, when he will stop being middle aged and begin to be old in earnest.   
He’s got it all; the house and the car and the family, and he will keep driving and golfing and drinking like all the other fat old retirees around here and he will be normal and extraordinary all at once and everything will be okay. Finally. That is how the story is supposed to end; with him on a beach with his beautiful wife and his beautiful children and enough money to rule the world and he’s happy, happy, happy. 

The memory of Trevor is one long buried, but now it’s been unearthed and Michael digs his nails into him palms to keep from groaning in fear. Trevor is dead. He must be. Michael does not think about Trevor’s retreating back nine years ago. He does not think of the man who he once thought could never die, who would meet the Grim Reaper and kill him or fuck him and live forever and ever and ever. 

He feels sick. He shakes his head to clear it, to toss out those thoughts--he is an old man, now, but still there is part of him that fears the very though of Trevor will bring him about, like they said about the devil when he was young. Even thinking the devil’s name made him know you. Even thinking of Trevor’s face would bring him back.   
Michael drinks deeply and breathes evenly and does not think.


End file.
